


Time To Say Goodbye

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2445233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She talks about her brothers and her sister, who you never knew existed until you were eleven years old. Peter and Edmund and Lucy, who died in a train crash that killed Granny’s parents too, and their cousin Eustace and the dear old professor who had raised them during the war. Granny had been all alone, when she was only twenty two years old. </p>
<p>Twenty two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time To Say Goodbye

Your grandmother is old, so impossibly old that sometimes you cannot imagine ever living as long as she has. When you were younger, she used to tell stories of war and big houses in the countryside; stories of America, where you have never been; stories of places you will go one day, when you are grown up and can go to places too.

You told her that once, that you couldn’t wait until you were grown-up and she gave you a strange look, a look that you still remember to this day. Her eyes were shiny and although she was looking at you, she seemed like she was very far away.

“There will come a day, my little love, when you will regret saying something like that.”

You looked at Mummy and she just shrugged like she didn’t understand either. 

“Is Granny alright?” you asked on the way home, “She looked funny.”

“Sometimes when I was little, she would say things like that. Always to me, never to Uncle Ian or Uncle Patrick.”

You remembered that, for years afterwards, but you’ve never asked Granny why.

She doesn’t tell stories of places now. 

She tells stories of people.

She talks about her brothers and her sister, who you never knew existed until you were eleven years old. Peter and Edmund and Lucy, who died in a train crash that killed Granny’s parents too, and their cousin Eustace and the dear old professor who had raised them during the war. Granny had been all alone, when she was only twenty two years old. You think that twenty two sounds terribly old but Mummy is much older and she still has her brothers and her mother, and Daddy has his brothers and sisters and his father. Granny was all alone, living in America, and until she met Grandad when she was twenty five, she lived by herself in New York and only got birthday cards from her friends and never had a Christmas at home because she didn’t have a real home anymore.

She tells the stories of her brother Peter, the oldest, who was brave and strong and who always remembered the thing that his mother said, that he had to look after his siblings as best he could. She tells of the times he would sit up with her, writing the letters to mother and father; of how he would carry Edmund up to bed when he fell asleep, even though he wasn’t that much bigger; of how he would play imaginary games with Lucy for more hours than seemed comprehensible.

She tells stories of Edmund, who when he was young was afraid and lashed out, but who grew to be just and fair, funny and clever, so clever that you need never fear not knowing an answer. She tells of the times he would choose the books for her to read, knowing her taste better than she did; of how he would sense when Peter needed to run and run until he was too tired to think; of how he was Lucy’s fiercest defender, after their differences as young children.

She tells stories of Lucy, who you think she loved the most, who was the kindest and most lovely person who ever lived. She tells of the times Lucy would crawl into bed beside her to wipe away the tears; of how Lucy was the only one who could make Peter smile when he was angry or scared or sad; of how she and Edmund would go out and find birds with broken wings, taking them home to tend until they were fixed.

When she tells the stories, she gets the same look; smiles but with closed eyes, like she is afraid that the memories will leak out and that she will lose them.

“They are all I really have, my stories,” she says, “They are almost all I can give you anyway, my love.”

She does have some things, things that belonged to them. There are boxes of letters, piled in the loft, but you aren’t allowed to read them. She has a box of other things; Uncle Peter – that’s how you think of him, uncle – had a bowtie that she treasures, and a book of stamps that he collected for years. Uncle Edmund had a sketching set, pencils sharpened down to stubs and a money box in the shape of a train. It still has some old coins rattling around in it. Auntie Lucy had a scarf, a scarf which smells like honey and vanilla, like someone you have never met before, and a strange little empty bottle with a cork shaped like a lion’s head that Granny just says Lucy had forever, ever since she was a little thing.

“These are the things I chose,” Granny says, touching them gently, “I couldn’t keep everything. There was too much.”

Granny dies quietly one evening, tucked up in her bed, when you are thirteen years old. You aren’t there but Mummy is, and Uncle Ian is, and Uncle Patrick too. Mummy says that Granny looked happy, happier than she ever remembered her being.

“Do you think they will be there?” Granny had asked, “Waiting for me?”

“Yes,” Uncle Patrick had said, “They’re waiting.”

“All of them?” Granny whispered, “Aslan too?”

“Him too,” Uncle Patrick said, although he didn’t know who Aslan was.

“I made him terribly angry, you know,” she murmured, “So angry.”

“You’re forgiven, Mum,” he said, “You’re forgiven.”

And Granny died with a smile on her face.

She leaves you the boxes of letters and she says that only you can read them. Mummy is hurt, you think, but she doesn’t say anything.

It takes you days and days to read them. The early ones are from the first month of their evacuation, written by Granny to her mother, but then, on the 12th November 1939, the letters change. They are still signed ‘Susan’ but it sounds like a different person wrote them. Like a grown up was suddenly pretending to be the same girl.

They get longer and longer and soon Granny is writing to Uncle Peter and Uncle Edmund and Auntie Lucy as well as her mother and father, and the letters are different again, like there had been a fight and no one would quite say why. Granny had both sets, the back and the forth, and Uncle Peter was angry and Uncle Edmund was trying to make her change her mind and Auntie Lucy was sad, just so sad. They kept asking her to come back to them, to come back to England and to forget all about America and ‘that man’. You don’t think ‘that man’ is Gramps, because Gramps was so very kind and the man in the letters was dangerous, or at least that’s what Uncle Peter said.

The first time you read the word ‘Narnia’, you think it must be someplace you have never heard of. You borrow Ben’s atlas and you look for hours but you can’t find a Narnia anywhere in the whole world. You ask him then and he laughs and tells you that he has never heard of it. It keeps coming up though, in more letters, and so does ‘Aslan’, who Granny upset and who Auntie Lucy kept calling ‘our very best friend’. 

None of the letters ever say enough about anything though, and you don’t understand. That is until you get to a letter from Uncle Edmund, written a month before the crash. It is only short, a note really, and it gives you the closest thing to an answer that you have so far.

_My dearest Su,_

_I am tired now of talking about Narnia, when I know you only want to forget all about it. Pete and Lu still think that Aslan would take you back one day, if only you came back to us. I don’t tell them that I don’t think any of us will ever go back. Now we are grown, there is no room for us there anymore. We had our time, all those years ago. We were kings and queens of that dear silly place. Can we really ask for more?_

_Sometimes I feel so old, Su. We lived one lifetime already, you and I, Pete and Lu. We lived a lifetime in that magic place and we can’t ever tell another soul about it. There are times I feel like you do, like perhaps we did imagine it all. I think somehow it would make it easier, you know, if we had. We wouldn’t have to live then, knowing that we could never go back. That’s the cruellest thing of all._

_I love you, Su, and I hope you know that. I don’t care for that man and I don’t think you do really. I hope that you realise that soon and leave him at least, even if you don’t come home to us. I just want you to be happy, Susan, as happy as you can possibly be, and I at least will be waiting here for you when you feel ready to be with us again._

_Until then, all my love,_

_Ed._

It’s the last letter that Uncle Edmund wrote to Granny and it is stained with tears and crumpled, like it has been read over and over again. 

He talks about a magical place, about Narnia, about being kings and queens and you believe every word that he says. You remember what Granny said about growing up, you know now why you can’t find Narnia in an atlas. 

You know why Granny was so far away. 

Mummy cannot help but ask you what is in the letters, although you never breathe a word of Narnia and Aslan. You know why Granny gave you the letters. You are not yet old enough to stop believing in magic, not like she did. 

The greatest thing she ever gives you is that belief. 

You are only sorry that she had to lose hers for you to always have yours.

**Author's Note:**

> Because absolutely nothing is fair about how Susan's story ended


End file.
